if your setup works with optifine you can use the 'load far' setting that provides to do this, but if you need to set your view-distance below far even with fastcraft, you really need to install optifine anyway.
I've tried that, but there doesn't seem to be any change. MultiplayerChunkCache in the F3 stats remains the same, and Opis doesn't say any more chunks get loaded.
I figure it could be a nice idea to ask about this here, since it's an issue related to 1.7.10's performance after all.
There's an unresolved bug in 1.7.10 (and apparently plenty of versions before it as well, but I found it more easily noticeable in .10) where, if you're playing in single player mode, the server's and the client's view distances are the same. The problem about doing things this way is that this means chunks beyond that view distance (plus one, it seems) won't be loaded by the game at all, which usually results in really poor mob spawning, among obviously other loaded chunk-related issues. This is easily noticeable if you use Opis, for example, set your view distance to the minimum possible, then open its minimap and check the currently loaded chunks (after moving away from spawn, obviously). And here are two likely related Mojang bug tracker issues: [1] [2]
Lastly, I have found a jar mod that tries fixing this (link, scroll down a bit), but it doesn't seem to work in a modded environment.
So, would it be possible to add an option (preferentially a config one, since it might impact performance a bit) to force the server's view distance to a minimum of 10, in single player? No idea if this is the best way to tackle this problem, however, so if it isn't asking too much I'd be thankful if you could look a bit more into it as well.
